Cale Yarborough #66 Phillips/TropArtic Pontiac

    Out of all the Racing Champions cars I have, there are 2 of them that really don't make sense, and sort of anger me to a degree~ One of them is the Kenny Bernstein Quaker State car, with the other being this Cale Yarborough #66 Phillips/TropArtic Pontiac~ The reason behind me repulsion for these cars is that Kenny and Cale never raced them, yet Racing Champions made it appear as if they did, especially for the Cale car, as it has his name printed on the car, while Kenny Bernstein's car is left blank where the name should be~

    The last race Cale ever ran came in the 1988 season finale @ Atlanta, the Atlanta Journal 500, where he started the race in 26th, and earned his final top 10 of his career with a 10th place finish, driving the #29 Hardee's Oldsmobile~ I can't find any information stating that he was rumored to race anymore after the end of the 1988 season, so again, I don't see why Racing Champions made this car with his name on it~
                            
                                                Lake Speed's Phillips/TropArtic Pontiac~

      For the start of the 1990 season, Cale had picked up sponsorship with Phillips/TropArtic, and changed the car number from 29 to 66~ He also switched car manufacturers from Oldsmobile's to Pontiac's, and chose Dick Trickle to drive the car after Dale Jarrett left for greener pastures~

    Under this sponsorship, the team ran 3 seasons with drivers Dick Trickle, Chuck Bown, Randy Lajoie, Dorsey Schroeder, Lake Speed, another stint with Trickle, Jimmy Hensley, Bobby Hillin Jr., and Chad Little~ It seems like Cale couldn't make up his mind, or even give these drivers time to adjust to the car before he ditched them for someone else~ During this 3 year stretch, the team had 1 pole, 0 wins, 2 top 5's, and 8 top 10's~

    I'm not going to get into the stats for the other drivers of this car, as Racing Champions did make several versions of this car, and I will be reviewing them later on individually~ The car ran 87 races under this sponsorship, with Trickle driving the majority of the races in it with 33 starts~

                                         Cale Yarborough #66 Phillips/TropArtic Pontiac~

                                                              Click pics to enlarge~

                                                        

    Racing Champions didn't do a bad job with the car, it basically looks just as the real one did~ As I said earlier, my main gripe is that he never drove the car, or as far as I know, was never even rumored to drive it~ It would be like if they made a David Pearson #16 Chattanooga Chew car just because he was the owner of the car, except a Pearson car would make more sense, as he was at least planning on driving that car until neck and back problems forced him to change his mind, leaving it solely to his son Larry to drive~ I remember when I first bought this car as a child, I was so excited that Cale may just come back and run a few races again, only to find out that was never the case~

     My only theory as to why this car was made would be that perhaps Cale didn't have a driver secured yet, so Racing Champions just slapped his name on it, along with a somewhat bad card that shows Cale sitting on a tire, staring at the ground~ In all honesty, I believe had Cale ran the car, he could have had just as good, if not better results in it than Trickle and the rest of the drivers that piloted the ride~

    I actually had no intentions of reviewing this car until much later down the road, but one of my monitors died and left me no choice~ I use the other monitor to gather information for my posts, and having just one monitor makes it more difficult, with having to switch tabs so many times~ Below are some videos of Cale's career in NASCAR~ Enjoy, and thanks for stopping by the blog~ I had a busy weekend, so I apologize for not posting the past couple of days~

                                              Cale flies over the wall (1965 Southern 500)~

                                                      Song about Cale Yarborough~

                                                        Cale wins the 1974 Southern 500~

                                                  Cale Yarborough Hall of Fame video~